


coalescing

by imperiality (orphan_account)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, i'm talking feather light here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 23:04:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15205442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/imperiality
Summary: memories... where'd you go.....(you're all i've ever known)





	coalescing

Lance doesn't know if it makes him an old soul or not, but he demarcates a lot of his relationship with Pidge by the words _remember when._ They’ll look at a billboard, knowing how the march of time and withering of wealth changed it before their eyes. They’ll look at where that old park bench used to be. They’ll walk by where that one good ice cream stand used to be, and it had the best sundays.

Pidge will take Lance’s hand, and he’ll remember how her fingers felt before they were smoothed over by hours in front of a keyboard. Swiping over papers. He’ll intertwine their fingers, look to where she’s pointing and say

“Remember that hill?”

Lance looks past the bandstand of the bottom of the hill, idyllic and romantic with its strings of lights and curtains of flowers. Farther past the families and couples sitting comfortable around their blankets.

No, he follows her gesture all the way up, where the hill evens and the sun falls flat, none occupying the space under the melting summer sun.

The memory of that space in Lance’s mind is as different as night and day.

That’s because it is day, but _was_ night.

“I do.”

Lance remembers the bandstand. The string lights glowing and warm amidst a settling autumn fog. Gold illuminated. The hill was empty and silent. He took Pidge’s hand, walked them up the side and laid them on the flat top as they watched the town slumber.

Then, the purple sky blended and fused with the white and hold horizon. The glow had caught in Pidge’ hair, her eyes, the raise of her cheekbones.

Then, Lance had only one thought proceeding that moment and he is ever thankful that he made good on it.

Then, on top of the hill, with the blue and chilling air bracing them, with the gold and silver light caressing them; they began the start of a promise. It was clumsy, sincere, but it was theirs.

Lance remembers that night even without seeing the hill.

“Man, that feels like it was just yesterday.”

So does Pidge.

Lance sees the night in his dreams, climbs the hill in his mind and his heart always opens with the rush of air from the memory. If he could go back to that night were it within his power, he wouldn’t go. Not with the new promises he’s gotten to make. To have. To hold. He wants to stay right where and when he is.

He could go back, but every time they look backwards, life takes them forward by light speeds. They look back, and snap forward again.

 

“Don’t worry, Lance.” Pidge will say with a kiss to his temple. “There’ll be more sunsets.”

And yes Lance knows that, but he doesn’t want to miss a single one. He doesn’t want to miss a single thing. What if he ever forgets the way the sleepy town’s lights radiated from Pidge’s face? What if he forgets the best of her quips, the heat of her hands, the smooth of her palms? Right now, he can find no greater remorse than the notion that he should let even a moment, fragment, second of his life slip his mind.

The grace of how Pidge says things she has learned, but the tact of _what_ she says may still be left to be desired.

“Lance, babe.” She strokes his hair from his forehead, but doesn’t soothe his scrambled mind. “Not everything is worth being remembered.”

True, but makes it hurt no less.

He says, “What if I forget the sunset from the hill?”

And she’ll say “there’ll be more.”

But there will never be another like it. No 2 are the same.

He says, “What if I forget the sunset from the hill?"

He means, _Pidge. You are my sunset from the hill._

Another dusk passed is another he cannot regain.

Each gaze out the window brings Lance further from Pidge. Each day going by, he lingers himself longer by her side. He idles himself more at places she can just hear them think _remember when._ She knows. She hears and thinks it, too.

Each question Lance asks makes her worry more and she doesn’t know if she should help assuage or disengage.

Pidge hardly wants to encourage this… thing going on with Lance but she can’t belittle him any more than she probably has. (That he’d promise she hasn’t.) She doesn’t want to call attention to it; for his own sake, but she cannot let it fester; for hers. She cannot let it rise but mustn’t let it lie.

Time moves and pushes them onward, and Lance has quieted on his reminiscing. Last week his remember when’s had been an all-time high, then like the final drop in a rain storm, all had gone still. Lance is not quiet, not by any means, not in a conventional sense. In this? His silence is deafening.

It’s taken Pidge a long time for her to know to focus on what he _doesn’t_ say, more than what he does.

He doesn’t say _remember when,_ anymore. He doesn’t take her hand to point her at times gone by, hoping to recapture and relive a moment already passed.

No, he doesn’t linger any more. He covers empty silence with hearty laughs. He snatches Pidge’s hand, and takes them away. Lance takes them forward.

That night when they star gaze at his apartment, she lets her eyes fall from their upward gaze. They settle on Lance’s face.

Her mind races with her back-tracking thoughts.

_How do I ask him to think about it, without thinking about it?_

Her gaze can’t find its way back up.

_Why am_ I _the one hyper-fixated on the past, now?_

Lance is so bright, beautiful and blinding next to her. She keeps her view down and beside.

_Why can’t I find the words to say?_

In all truthfulness, Pidge has never held a great way with words to begin with. Numbers, creation, tangibility is where logic is found. Words… emotion. Articulation. These things are illogical to her. With Lance’s help these invisible, intangible things have come closer to her grasp- still never holding mastery over them like Lance, however.

In the morning, when all the stars have faded but 2, (one hung in the sky and one hung in her heart,) she gets a thought. Vicious, loud and vindicated is it. It taunts her: why didn’t you think of it before? It mocks her: and you said you were the logical one. It bruises her: you could have helped this all sooner.

She silences it.

_I’m doing it now._

Words elude Pidge, so she switches tactics. She grabs onto something she can hold. Pidge cannot give to Lance words, so instead gives him hope.

And a future.

Hope in the shape of a-

Lance turns it around in his hands. Sets the lens down achingly slow, tenderly delicate.

“Is this for me?”

Pidge knows memories are fluid and flimsy. She knows that sometimes the things that Lance wants to hold onto most, slips away the fastest. She knows that she would pour her heart, soul and wellness to rewiring the brain so every thought could come on call. Since she cannot do so at the immediate, present moment, she settled for the next best thing:

“The Rebel’s all I could have asked for.” Lance kisses her long and sweet. “Thank you.”

The camera Lance keeps turning and stroking in his hands captures and rewires and recalls for them.

“Keep all the sunsets you want, babe.”

Pidge urges him to catalogue all the memories they make. With his camera, Pidge hopes to never let a moment pass them by. Any small euphoria, Lance can take himself out of the moment, capture it, put the camera down and come back in.

From that moment forward, Lance becomes inseparable with it. He set out what Pidge urged him to do.

Pidge doesn’t want to forget any moment that they encounter. Pidge doesn’t want to have to _worry_ about it.

And she doesn’t.

For every elated breath, every rising setting sun, every time she thinks _now would be a good time to-_

And Lance is already there.

In all the places for which they’re homesick, all the family they call theirs, Lance takes and threads and prints and immortalizes their fleeting time together. Quickly, almost overnight, their apartments are littered and overrun with photos and memories and recalls.

Of smiles, and lights, and hilltops.

Of echos of whispered words. Of the press of Pidge’s lips against Lance’s cheek.

With boardwalks, and coastlines.

Of oceans so blue, skies so saturated and clouds so high that they can feel the balmy air around them.

Lance commemorates it all, and Pidge counts herself lucky and blessed to be their in the moment with him.

She holds her framed photo of herself and her brother, smiling to the camera knowing full well the discrepancy of how long the memory should and would last. Next to that is a small empty hilltop.

A small empty hilltop, framed by a small, ornate frame. The rounded peak embraced with a pink and purple sky.

As she gazes into the photo, taken back to the hushed tones of their faces and the warm light from the town, she finds it silly how worried Lance was that he would forget.

Pidge doesn’t know how she could _let_ herself forget the beginning of something so beautiful.

But now, she’s daily grateful she doesn’t have to.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed, nat ^^


End file.
